24 comments:

Father, forgive me, but the first picture puts me off to some degree; then I see the site whilst looking slick is titled "Homepage" (hello, search-engine indexing, anyone?), and the graphic shows lots of lay people (in jeans!?) in the Sanctuary. Oh dear.

Ouch. I'd like to cheer for the Society of Jesus: they kept me in the Church when I was near to going into nothing at all, and my prayer life was revived. OK, so they dress funny. I think they'd admit that too.

Guru Gobind Singh (1675-1708) was the (tenth and) last person to be called a guru in Sikhism. He declared that the holy book, the Adi Granth, was to be the Guru, or teacher, ever after. It became known as the Guru Granth Sahib. It was Guru Gobind Singh who set up the brotherhood, the Khalsa. This is the subject of the third photo.

After the main weekly service in the gurdwara (the Sikh place of worship) everyone goes to the kitchen the langar, to share a meal. This includes special food called karah parshad, made of flour, butter, sugar and water, to remind people of the sweetness of God. Everyone is welcome at this community meal. This is the subject of the second photo.

At the gurdwara (the word means the guru's gate) the holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, is kept raised up on cushions and under a canopy. People cover their heads, remove their shoes and come and sit on the floor as a sign of respect. They listen to a reading from the book and sing hymns.

I have gained much from making a brief study of the Sikh faith. After all, how often do we find people from other faith communities getting the wrong end of the stick about the Catholic Faith?

How sad that they do not seem to refer to the history of the British Jesuits after 1603 - the heroes, later penal-times martyrs, first-class education system leading to the creation of a Catholic middle-class. Why aren't they proud of it? Divorced from their roots, they are like flowers in a vase - pretty and beautifully assembled - but with a short shelf life. By saying this I do not mean to disparage individual Jesuits who still give their lives to God and their fellow human beings - but they should be proud rather than ashamed of their past.

I know one of the Jesuits in one of the photos (the one with the guitar in fact!) More interested in religious pluralism than Catholic doctrine.

I think that the Jesuit order is finished though. Most Jesuits I know (and I know many)do not represent the teachings of the Church as I understand them, so their inevitable demise is not something to be lamented.

“Being a priest is not enough, being a good priest is important…. The Jesuit vocation is a very special type of religious vocation, called to a great spirituality. The Society has given many saints to Mother Church. You are called to aim at nothing less….”

whilst the SJ's have given the Church many saints in the past, today they are infected with rationalism and modernism, thats not to say that there arn't good jesuits these days but I'd say is despite rather than becasue of being jesuits.

Becoming a Jesuit is perhaps the best chance most young Catholic men have of being a millionnaire. The Society has 200 mostly elderly members in the UK, but is fantastically rich. The Charity Commissioners report lists total assets of over £450 million, with investments and cash at £330 million. The SJs are far wealthier than any other religious order and any UK diocese, although they now run only about 8 churches, a handful of schools and retreat centres, having withdrawn from msot of the large town and city parishes they once ran. But they have kept their Mayfair Church (Farm St). Such evidently is the preferential option for the poor they like to lecture the rest of us about......

Oh, for the old days. Sometimes you can still find orthodox Jesuits, like Fr. Mitch Pacwa, and I had one in high school who was "old school." I can well remember him walking up and down the school parking lot while saying his brieviary at the time in cassock. Considering the way people drove in that parking lot, it was clear he was under divine protection!

The SJs are still in Glasgow city centre where they run a parish (St Aloysius) which has a mixture of the well off and not so well off . In addition they run an expensive school (also called St Aloysius)although I don't think there are any priests on the teaching staff. I have attended lunchtime mass there a couple of times a week for the past six months. The liturgy leaves much to be desired and they pass the collection plate round every day. One thing in their favour is that confessions (in a confessional) are available for around two hours daily.

Shukach, you say that joining the SJs is the best chance many young Catholic men will have of becoming millionaires (note spelling). That is a preposterous remark to make. Just because the order is wealthy doesn't mean that its individual members are. I suggest you withdraw the insinuation.

The only SJ Priest I know is Fr Hugh Thwaites. A Holier and wiser priest would be hard to find indeed and he does NOT fit into any of the categories depicted in those awful pictures! Never seen Fr Hugh in anything but black shirt, collar and jacket - polo shirts NEVER!!!! Yikes!!! Not even for his famous 80th, 85th, 90th birthday parties!!!! St John Vianney would be well pleased with this Faithful and Consistant Servant of the Lord.

Here in the US there are a number of good Jesuits around Fordham University in New York and Marquette in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Other than those two places the picking is rather thin (and they have about 30 more colleges or universities).

Here many of the good vocations go the St. Joseph Province Dominicans (New York) and West Coast (California).

There seems to be little doubt that the J's are in crisis. But it's not entirely their fault. At tne end of Vatican II Paul VI gave them two tasks: fighting atheism and implementing the Council. The first led them to try and attempt an accomodation with Marxism; the second to repeat their triumphant implementation of Trent.

Marxism collapsed, leaving that effort high and dry. It no longer features in Jesuit thought. Since JPII and the present Holy Father, the implementation of the Council has taken a more authentic, less 'progressive', form. Once more, the J's have been left high and dry. Yet the Holy Father realises their value, notably in areas and with people the Church cannot easily reach. That's why there were no admonitions from him at the end of the last General Congregation.

I hope they continue once the dead weight of age is lessened during the next ten to twenty years. Here the winnowing blade is merciful. By then a later generation will either have come to their senses as far as the Order's relationship with the Church is concerned, or they will slowly die. Inevitably they will become much smaller and this will affect their major apostolates at the Gregorian University, the Biblicum and the Orientale. But what will replace them in these essential institutions is far more problematical. They still remain essential to the Church and I have noticed a small, but perceptible, thaw in their policies. Not least, notice that Fr Matthew Power SJ is wearing a clerical collar during his introductory talk in this promotional dvd. Even two years ago that would have been unthinkable. But praise God they will never become tattists.

I have been blessed with knowing some really great men among the Jesuits, but of the old school. They show what the Jesuits can be - it's such a tragedy that the Order as a whole has become so infected with modernism.

Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia, et ubi ecclesia vita eterna

Pray for Francis our Pope, and for the Church of God

My Parish's Website

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